


love is for the child i once was

by treesofsilverleaves (Mixed_Up_Crazy)



Series: guns don't kill people (but they sure make it a lot easier) [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, a little bit? I tried to kind of hint at it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 04:38:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3368153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mixed_Up_Crazy/pseuds/treesofsilverleaves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The idea that she has feelings is preposterous to everyone.  Except when it comes to him.</p><p>The Black Widow must not have weakness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love is for the child i once was

**Author's Note:**

> rewrite of Love is for Children as of 2/15/15

“Is this love, Agent Romanoff?”

She has blood on her hands.  She has daggers in her eyes.  She has ice in her heart.

Rumor has it, she doesn’t even have a heart.

She is a cool, calculated killer.  An assassin of the highest degree.  A robot, many whisper behind her back.  Illogical emotions, feelings, do not compute.  She is logic and swift kills and she manipulates those around her as easy as breathing.

And yet she fights, sharp and scrappy, burning to live, to survive.  She is fire, she is red, she bleeds passion even as her face is wiped into a clean slate.

She is contradiction.  She is human.  But she has no time for humanity, no time for vulnerability, and for that she is respected and feared.

 _Is this love?_   He’s taunting her, she knows.  The true question, the one lurking underneath the surface, is much more invasive, much more personal, much more dangerous.  _Is this weakness?_

There is no more room for weakness in her.  There has never been any room for much besides orders and murders and Disney films teaching her to speak perfect American English – not since she was a child.

It may be hard to imagine, but she _was_ a child, once.  Once upon a time, she was a bright-eyed little girl, a child with dreams as big as any other.  She was to be a dancer, a ballerina, adored by all.  These dreams were squashed, pushed aside, too quickly, too painfully, to bother remembering.  It is the past, she tells herself.  It will stay the past.

And yet the past continues to make itself known all too often.  She cannot stand fairytales.  She handcuffs herself to the bedpost.  She will never have children.  And her ledger, that damned ledger, bleeding and scarlet, haunts her dreams.  Her nightmares wake her with soundless screams, weak, weak, _weak_.

She is a cool, calculated killer.  She is not weak.  She is anything but weak.

Love is impossible.  She has grown up too fast, had hereyes forced open too fast.  She let go of her childhood dreams too fast.  Everything has moved too fast for something as slow and building as love.

It almost seems like an excuse.  Too fast, too painful, too often, too easy, too dangerous.  Too much.  It’s worn out and meaningless, but she continues to use the same old phrases (excuses?) because they are reliable, easy to fall back on.  In her chaotic world, she needs this constant, this reliable and easy and too-much and too-little, and it’s her way of remaining the cool and calculated killer she is supposed to be.

Because she has been unmade before.  Not just broken, torn apart at the seams, smashed and shattered and shredded, but completely _unmade_.  It is not a pleasant experience, she will tell you.  There will be no emotion in her voice, except maybe a hint of dryness that will somehow make you practically parched, hiding the raw, wet pain that she carries.

The child that she was had to be unmade to be remade into what she is.  Cool, calculated, assassin, killer, _murderer_.  Her childhood screams at her from the very top of her ledger, the first to die by her hand as surely as any physical kill.  But she never reacts, never cries out for mercy, for justice.

No one can know she has feelings.  _Weakness_.

Except him.

Somehow, somewhere, she slipped up.  Because he sees her, always, sees right through her and into something else, something that even she isn’t always aware of.  He sees her pain, her past, her weaknesses, but more than that he sees her determination and her courage and her strength.  He doesn’t just see the mask, the cool and calculated killer, he sees the little pieces of herself that she hides away beneath blood and bone and bullets and the quick snap of broken necks.

And in return, she sees him, his guilt and his pride, his passion and loneliness and fear of being broken and betrayed again.  They can see through each other, through the impenetrable armor; they are too similar, she knows, and that is why they are drawn together.  There is no one else in the world so like her and him.

She’ll never admit it, but she is grateful for him.

She’d been nothing more than a threat he was sent to eliminate.  But when he made a different call, when he didn’t get rid of her, everything changed.  It made her feel vulnerable, at first, the way she was so transparent to him.  It made her feel powerful, at first, the way he was so clear to her.  All of a sudden she was _feeling_ things again.

She hides it away, continuously, because she doesn’t _have_ feelings.  She is a cool, calculated killer, red in her ledger or not.  There is no room for weakness, only orders and murders and perfect American English.

And then he’s gone, taken away by a monster with magic on his fingers and ice in his veins, and it’s like a fairytale, the kind that she hates, but so much more real.  Too real.  And again, she’s forced to take her place as the heroine of the story – forcing back memories of too-small-too-strong hands and a hungry belly and Disney films imprinted onto her eyelids – she will trick the monster, using her cunning and cleverness, into revealing his plan.  But she knows, _she knows_ , that everything is changing again.

And she hates it.  Because it makes her feel.  Because it makes her weak.

Because it turns her back into the child with the bright smile and all those dreams, just as it is all being taken away.  She is not a child.  Not anymore.

She is bloody hands, and glaring eyes, and a blank face.  She is strong, and weak, and human.

And she is a liar.

“Love is for children.”

_Admitting weakness is for fools._

**Author's Note:**

> The Disney films and the handcuffs came from an episode of Marvel's Agent Carter. Which, by the way, I adore.


End file.
